About two slightly disregarded techniques
Today I had a jigeiko with a 19-year old guy, who is much shorter than me. Usually he can get ippon on me unless it is my initiative and attack or I just cover my had in an impolite way. The reason for that is, that he often attacks doing a big men and he proves it to be a quite successfull technique against people on my level. Because what one can do against big men? Debana kote is too slow if someone does the big men properly. Debana men is definitely not too slow, but hits the raised hands of the opponent. So it can result only in countering the attack. One could do nuki-do or tsuki - this is definitely an opening for those techniques. However, I do not have a reflex of doing these techniques, especially in this, situation. I doubt that any of the kendokas meet an opponent doing a big men often (unless you are less than 2 years into the practice). The student laughed, that this is the only technique he can do against me, because if he does not rise his hands that much he can not see my shinai. Truth or not truth, he could get me with this in shiai.
However, he told me what other people often try when he does the big men. They try debana sayu-men. There is plenty of time for debana, as I said before, but hitting from the side has a large chance of going past the opponent's hands. I did not try yet, I will try in the future - it makes lot's of sense.
The point is that, where I train and where I used to train the sayu-men is not practiced except for suburi and kirikaeshi. Moreover, when I practiced in Europe I could feel some sort of stigma attached to sayu-men. It was usually considered improperly guided attack, made from the side because of lack of skill to do it straight, not on purpose. I think I never had an opportunity to encounter it, except for the senseis that love their arsenal of side-attacks targeted at showing you were your place is. However, these do not seem to be ippon sayu-men, so one is not expected to follow them. Unless he wants to play a sensei on some poor kohai.
In Japan I started to encounter serious, ippon intended sayu-men. Even though it is not practiced in waza in my dojo, senpais do it, especially if there is some more violent chudan fight and it comes after a series of body shifts into different directions. So one can learn from that and... it seems to slowly come to me. The more I learn to move in 2D instead of front-back 1D, the more times I realize that I half-unconsciously, but purposely did a sayu-men. Not a big ippon succes rate yet, but hopefully getting there. This may be an explanation for the stigma in Europe attached to this technique. It is no secret that most foreigners have much worse footwork than Japanese, many not moving to the sides at all, or if doing so, losing their tame. Therefore, if sayu-men is best utilized with hiraki-ashi, one has to learn that properly first.
Well, being able to move in 2D and attacking from each position seems to be one of the main goals of Kendo. The sayu-men may be just another carrot. Especially that it seems to be one of the main techniques against nitto players.